


Jamaica Inn

by misura



Category: White Collar
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe - Pirate, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-03-06
Updated: 2010-03-06
Packaged: 2017-12-04 05:16:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/706980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wherein the dread pirate Neal Caffrey accidentally kidnaps Captain Peter Burke's cabin boy. Who turns out to be a girl. (His wife, to be precise.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jamaica Inn

**Author's Note:**

> right around the time I wrote this, gyzym started posting her awesome Neal-as-a-pirate fic, so I shelved mine and enjoyed hers instead.
> 
> I came across it again while cleaning out files, and decided I might as well post it here, as I still really like the idea of pirate!Neal.
> 
> Ocassionally quoted lyrics by Tori Amos.
> 
> [March 2013]

There's an order Neal has given - a clear order, he's fairly sure, although he might have been slightly tipsy at the time (not _drunk_ , naturally) - but then there's an incident and then there's an accident with someone spilling wine (horrible, cheap wine, barely worth the drinking, let alone any fighting but try telling that to a group of drunken cutthroats looking for an excuse (any excuse) to start a brawl) and then he's kind of crawling under the tables, because he's _Neal Caffrey_ and he doesn't _do_ tavern-brawls. As a rule, he also doesn't crawl, except that he's fairly sure he's seen Havisham somewhere in the middle of the room-slash-brawl and Neal Caffrey also never leaves a friend in trouble.

It all gets kind of fuzzy after that - someone hit him, and he hit someone back (because that's what you do, that's what everyone does, even if it's stupid and even if the other guy's twice your size and everyone around you looks unfamiliar which probably means that whichever side they're on, it's not _yours_ and it might very well be that other guy's). He was right about Havisham, maybe.

Maybe it happened the other way around, with him crawling in what he _thought_ was Havisham's direction but what, in reality, was someone else's, and Havisham went after him, because that's what first mates do when their captain gets drunk and heads for trouble.

They meet under a large round table and Neal says (wittily, he thinks at the time) "We've got to stop meeting in places like this," - it's witty because they _always_ meet here and they hardly ever get involved in a brawl; it must be their unlucky evening or something.

Havisham (less wittily, but then, Neal knows it's hard to be witty when drunk) says: "What?"

And then someone picks up the table and throws it through the window and Neal's thinking what Havisham just said ('what?') because that table's _large_ and _heavy_ and _someone just threw it through the window_ and Neal's just too young to die, and Havisham's too good a first mate, even if he nags a lot and can't hold his liquor.

And then Havisham pulls him upright and gives him a shove in the direction of the door (they're closer to it than they were, but also closer to someone who's throwing tables through windows, so Neal's not sure if there's been any real improvement of their situation) and Neal makes this soft, annoyed sound and starts walking towards the exit which is also the entrance, which wouldn't be particularly significant if it hadn't been for the fact that someone's coming in just then.

Havisham, bless his heart and all his thickheadedness, yells: "Run!" which is kind of silly - rooms filled by brawling people are really not suitable for running in - but Neal translates the suggestion as 'Hurry!', which is more sensible, if still slightly difficult.

Neal heads for the exit, Havisham following (and if Neal ever gets his hands on a second ship, he's going to have to demote him or something, because life without Havisham by his side and at his back or in front of him or wherever Neal needs him to be would simply be impossible) and Neal finally recognizes a few faces by the time they get to the exit which is also an entrance.

He's _sure_ he doesn't say anything at all like: "Someone grab that kid who just walked in."

In fact, he's (almost) positive he says: " _Don't_ grab that kid who just walked in," just in case someone's gotten a bright idea of the kind that's really not bright at all anymore when you're sober and wondering why you've got this much of a headache when you only had a few drinks the night before.

Thus, what happens afterwards is a great mystery. Also: completely, positively, absolutely, utterly, entirely and certainly _not his fault_.

*

"It's your fault we're all going to die," Havisham says.

_[can you patch my jeans, Peggy Ann?  
just a little stitch to mend the hole he has torn, if you can]_

Neal's head kind of feels like it's been out drinking all night last night, without his being aware of it, which is simply not fair at all - as unfair, in fact, as Havisham's gloomy statement would be if it were uttered by anyone else but Havisham.

"My head hurts." Small words usually work well, like 'it's not a storm, it's just a slightly strong breeze' and 'you call that tall? I've seen much taller waves, right before we lost the main mast that one time'. 'We're not sinking, we're just taking in a bit of water' usually works well, too. Havisham's a worrier. Neal's not. It all evens out, in the end.

"Burke's going to kill us." Harsh words, but Havisham's presenting him with a steaming mug the contents of which smells awful and will taste worse, so Neal lets it slide.

"No, he's not." Neal's got this fantasy about Burke where the man takes him prisoner and keeps him as his personal slave, because Burke recognizes genius when he sees it (anyone with eyes can see beauty, but few people can see past that, to the true brilliance that is Neal) and because he wants Neal's body, of course - Burke's human, after all.

"Yes, he is." Neal's also got this fantasy where _he_ takes _Burke_ prisoner and tempts him with wine, women and song (because Neal's got a great voice - anyone who's ever heard him sing and isn't Havisham says so) and they end up being best friends and going on wildly improbable adventures together. For some reason, that one feels slightly less realistic.

"What were you _thinking_?" Havisham's usually not this persistent in his worrying and hand-wringing.

"Hey!" Neal gets up. The cabin does some disturbing things. "You were there, too." Neal's uncertain about a lot of things, but that one, he's pretty sure of. "What did I do?"

"Oh." Havisham blinks at him, like an owl - or maybe, Neal thinks with a momentary lack of kindness, like a raving maniac to whom someone has just pointed out that yelling and getting all worked up doesn't actually help you to convince people you're right, quite aside from the fact that 'we're all going to die' is really not a useful fact to try and convince people of, given that most people kind of know it already, even if they might not be thinking of it right there and then. "You don't remember?"

Neal could mention the round table that got thrown through the window and the way the wooden floor has left a splinter in the ringfinger of his left hand and the horrible wine he can't possibly have taken more than a sip of, just to convince himself that yes, it's still the same old swill. "Not really."

"Oh," Havisham repeats. "That is ... unfortunate. I kind of hoped that maybe you had a plan."

"I do have a plan." A no-brainer, that one - Neal _always_ has a plan - like right now, for example, where his very cunning plan is to get Mozzie to _tell him what happened last night_ without any hand-wringing or moaning about how they're all going to die or saying it's all Neal's fault. Especially that last one is important, Neal thinks; he'll accept any blame that can be laid at his door fair and square (which is to say: none, because Neal never makes the kind of mistakes for which blame needs to be assigned).

"Really." Havisham's tone implies the kind of polite doubt that it would be improper for a first mate to express regarding a statement made by his captain - except that Havisham is, of course, expressing aforementioned doubt; he's just doing it in such a way that Neal can't call him on it, which is typical and sneaky and exactly the kind of underhanded dealing Neal likes for other people to be on the receiving end of. "You came up with a plan that involves us having kidnapped Burke's cabin-boy and him not killing us for it."

"We could ask for ransom."

"Yes, Neal. We could ask for ransom." Neal suspects that, at one point in time, Havisham was a teacher or maybe a nanny - he's got that way of talking, like the world is this very simple, very easy to understand place that's not scary at all if you know the right way to go about your own business without sticking your nose into other people's.

"And we could make him promise not to kill us." Fantasies about corrupting the man aside, Neal knows Burke is a man of his word, as straight as they come - and more often than not, 'they' come quite crooked indeed. It's why Neal calls his fantasies 'fantasies' instead of 'plans' - which is not to say he hasn't got any 'plans' for Burke, of course, just that they don't involve buried treasures, erupting volcanoes and Neal saving Burke from a tribe of cannibals who are about to have him for dinner.

"Brilliant." 

"My head hurts." He's not in the captain's cabin, Neal realizes - he's in Havisham's. "I think I need to lie down some more." Havisham mutters something low enough for Neal to pretend not to have heard it and taken offense, which is probably a good thing, because Neal hates trying to insult Havisham back in a way that he feels befits a captain berating a first mate for speaking out of turn. "I'll think of something, Mozzie - I promise. Just ... later, all right?"

Havisham looks unconvinced, which would hurt more if Neal wasn't in a fair bit of pain already, not to mention completely undeserving of such utter lack of confidence - as if Neal's never gotten them out of trouble before, when the occasion called for it (and with Havisham telling him how it was all his fault).

"Where _is_ the kid, anyway?" Burke seems the kind of captain to inspire loyalty (much like Neal himself, although entirely different, of course, because Neal's got style and flair and a proper notion of how the world works and Burke's just got a book of rules to stick to, taxes to pay and orders to follow). There seems to be a fair chance, therefore, that his cabin boy (completely misunderstanding the situation) will make an attempt at what he might view as 'making an escape' but which would most likely turn out to be 'getting himself lost at sea' (by taking the rowboat) or 'feeding the sharks' (by simply jumping overboard). Neal can't claim much of an actual personal acquaintance with Burke, but he does not think being the bearer of such news would endear him to his favorite member of her majesty's navy in any way - after that, the best thing he might hope for after his heroically saving of Burke's life will probably be more along the lines of a handshake than - well.

"Your cabin. But Neal - "

"I'll trust him not to murder me in my sleep," Neal says. Burke wouldn't either. "Ship's yours."

*

"This time, he's gone too far." Peter wants to feel angry - furious even - because there are _rules_ to this game, even for people who don't believe in laws, and while it's one thing to steal a shipload of oranges, it's an entirely different thing to steal an actual person.

_[maybe I got too set in my ways]_

"He won't harm her, sir." Jones sounds uncertain, like he's not sure, like he thinks that maybe Caffrey _will_ harm Elizabeth, and while Peter wants to grab him and shake him and tell him that's not the kind of thing Caffrey _does_ , he's entirely too aware of the fact that only yesterday, he would have sworn that kidnapping innocent people isn't the kind of thing Caffrey does either.

In a way, of course, Peter _has_ sworn that, by giving Elizabeth permission to go into town by herself - he knew that when she said 'sight-seeing' what she _meant_ was 'taking a look at Caffrey', because yes, the man has pulled off some stunts that would have been admirable if only he'd been operating on the right side of the law and yes, he probably talks about the man too much, and now Caffrey is holding Elizabeth's life and Peter's _everything_ , and Peter can't seem to get past that cold, sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, to actually breathe and _think_.

"He could ruin me just by making it known she's a 'she'," Peter says grimly; he's always known it might happen, of course; he knew the risks from the first time when Elizabeth smuggled herself aboard his ship to inform him she had no intention of being the kind of wife who stays at home waiting for news about her husband, but it always used to be _one day_ , never _now_.

"Would people really take his word for something like that?" Jones shakes his head, as if answering his own question - knowing, perhaps, that Peter might answer differently. "He hasn't got any proof."

"I'd give him all the proof he'd need," Peter says, knowing it could happen that way, that Caffrey's more than smart enough to play it like that, to make Peter give up everything, "if it would make him let her go."

Jones remains silent for several long moments after that - considering his career-prospects if Peter ruins himself, perhaps, or simply trying to find something to say, some way to return them to their more accustomed roles. Peter knows that, in many ways, he's being selfish; ending his career will not only influence his own life and Elizabeth's.

"We'll find her, sir."

Peter nods once, sharply, not quite trusting himself to say another word on the subject.


End file.
